Response to Kirsten Mitsuyo Maezumi

Thank you for your letter to Sweeping Zen, which eloquently described some of the suffering that occurred at ZCLA in 1983, when we acknowledged Maezumi Roshi’s alcoholism and discovered, day by day, the sexual relationships that had been occurring with Roshi and Genpo and their students. It was a very difficult and painful time, and, as you pointed out, it continues to affect us all to this day.

You ask why forty four American Zen teachers have written to the Kanzeon board, asking that Genpo take a leave and enter therapy with a specialist in sexual misconduct by clergy? To me it is like a drunk driver who gets into a wreck and people are injured. He apologizes and swears not to do it again. He gets a new car, drives drunk, and harms more people. Apologizes, stops drinking for a while, then does it a third time. It is time to take away the keys, stop driving, and get into a good treatment program. Your father admitted his addiction. He had the courage to enter residential treatment and attend AA meetings where his addiction was understood and his special status in the Zen world didn’t matter at all. His honesty is still inspiring. Because of it he was able to resume teaching us all for another decade. I hope if we get in trouble with addiction, we will all follow his example.

Zen teaching is a profession. Professionals have an obligation not to betray the trust of their students/clients/patients, trust that is essential to the work of spiritual teaching or therapy. When we take on the profession, we take on the responsibility to maintain proper boundaries with those we are caring for. If a patient tries to kiss a doctor or a minister or a therapist, it is the professional’s responsibility to stop the behavior. A doctor or even a lawyer who has repeated sexual contact with clients can lose their license to practice permanently.

The American Zen teachers also have written letters to the Board of Kanzeon — and before that, to the Zen Studies Society — because we have a special concern about women. When male teachers have sexual relationships with women students, it creates a very difficult situation for these women. They are enrolled in the secrecy that is so corrosive within a sangha. Or within a partnership — one woman told me that her marriage was failing because her husband blamed her for her relationship with a teacher. Also, when a teacher sleeps with a woman and then transmits to her, it puts her credentials in doubt. “Horizontal transmission” it’s jokingly called. If women are to have a respected place as teachers of Zen, this behavior has to stop.

The experiences you described so vividly in your letter struck me and many others to the heart. This is exactly why the Zen teachers acted, so that wives, husbands, children, and students don’t have to experience the kind of suffering you described. And so that your father’s legacy, his wife, you and your brother and sister, and his many Zen descendants, can continue to bring benefit to the world.

I am very sorry for any suffering my role in these events caused in yours or your family’s life. In an earlier letter you asked me how I could have behaved in this way? What have I done about it? I will give you the simplest answers first. Then some longer explanations.

I took my own role in the events at ZCLA very seriously.

I did specifically focused therapy.

I did specific repentance work.

I realized that the best form of repentance was to change my behavior — for good.

I educated myself about clergy misconduct.

My husband and I emphasize the importance of the precepts in their literal form in our Zen teaching.

We have helped other Buddhist groups that requested assistance with issues of ethics and misconduct by teachers.

I have never had an inappropriate relationship with a student, nor has my husband.

I have been in a faithful marriage for 27 years.

Here are the longer explanations.

I left ZCLA in 1984 with the feeling, “If this is an example of what we have been touting as enlightened behavior (and I include my own), I want no part of it. “ For several years I did not practice Zen. I explored other religions. I got a job and spent more time with my children. I met many people who had never heard of Zen or who had no religion at all, who were kinder and wiser than we had been. Gradually I began to sit again, and rediscovered the purpose and power of practice. I felt renewed gratitude to your father for the invaluable gift of dharma that he had given us all.

I decided to educate myself about what can go wrong in spiritual communities, and I did a lot of reading, for example, about the Rajneesh group – which was then making headlines for all kinds of misconduct – and other communities. From that study I concluded that early warning signs that a group is headed for trouble are these.

over-adulation of the teacher

too much power residing in the teacher, with lots of “yes” men and women, and no checks and balances

believing that the ends justify the means (as in having healthy young people go on welfare at ZCLA so they could be on “staff”)

talking about us “inside” who know the truth and the “outside world” who do not

resultant loss of outside perspective

lack of clear ethical guidelines, maintained first and foremost by the teachers

resultant misuse of power – monetary, sexual, etc.

secrecy

manipulation, intimidation, coercion or threats

I also studied clergy misconduct. I read books such as Sex in the Forbidden Zone: Why Men in Power – Therapists, Doctors, Clergy, Teachers and Others – Betray Women’s Trust by Dr. Peter Rutter, and Is Nothing Sacred?: The Story of a Pastor, the Women He Sexually Abused, and the Congregation He Nearly Destroyed by Dr. Marie Fortune. I invited Dr. Rutter to give a presentation at a White Plum meeting in Palm Desert.

My husband Hogen and I took a professional workshop on clergy misconduct sponsored by the Alban Institute and Faithtrust Institute. We have since been invited to give this training at Buddhist teachers’ conferences and at the invitation of Buddhist groups in crisis. I’ve learned a lot by talking to many survivors of abuse by Buddhist clergy. Their stories are poignant, their wounds long-lasting.

I learned that often, in the chaos of an acute crisis, the wife of the offending teacher gets pushed aside. As I read your letter, I realized that nothing has been written about the suffering of the children. I’m glad you have begun our education about how children in the community are traumatized, too. (I had assumed, wrongly it seems, that when your father went into recovery and your parents reunited and moved out of LA to Idyllwild, that you had eleven years of good family life before your father’s untimely death in 1995.)

(A historical note. This is not an excuse, but a framing of the times. Looking back 30 years, it was a strange thing to do, to try to combine a hippie commune with a Zen monastery. In matters of mores, the hippie commune won out. It was the age of Aquarius, of rebellion against the old, of free love, open marriages, of turn-on-and-drop-out. Jealousy was regarded as a character flaw, and the Happy Hooker books extolled the joy and virtues of prostitution. When your father’s good friend and drinking companion Trungpa Rinpoche traveled to cities like LA, he was supplied with consorts, sometimes offered up by their husbands as gifts for their teacher. As someone said recently, “ZCLA in the old days was a highly sexually charged atmosphere.” While I can understand that it could seem to you that I was the cause of many difficulties, I and others got caught up in something that had been going on for some time there. While this is no excuse, it was a reality.)

Because of what happened at ZCLA, I know that my mind has a big capacity for delusion and rationalization. Therefore I’ve surrounded myself with safeguards, an empowered board, ethical guidelines that are posted, a standing committee that is available to work with any sensitive issues in the sangha, and By Laws that allow a vote of the Board or sangha to remove me from teaching at any time. I study with a Zen teacher to whom I am accountable.

You are right, your father was an outstanding teacher with a tremendous love for the dharma and a vision of liberation that took precedence in all he did. He poured his life energy into this work. May we make the necessary adjustments so that it can continue to bring benefit, not harm, to many people in the world.

About Jan Chozen Bays

Jan Chozen Bays (born August 9, 1945) is a Zen priest of the White Plum Asanga practicing in Oregon, where she is co-abbot of Great Vow Zen Monastery with her husband Laren Hogen Bays and also the teacher of the Zen Community of Oregon. Jan began her Zen studies in 1973 and in 1979 she received priestly ordination from Taizan Maezumi. A licensed pediatrician, Chozen Bays headed the medical center located at the Zen Center of Los Angeles for many years. In 1983 she completed the Harada-Yasutani koan curriculum and received Dharma transmission from Maezumi-roshi. Since the death of her teacher in 1995, Chozen Bays has practiced with the Rinzai priest Shodo Harada of Sogen-ji in Okayama, Japan and One Drop Zendo in Whidbey Island, Washington.
Jan has published a book for Tuttle Library titled Jizo Bodhisattva: Modern Healing and Traditional Buddhist Practice which has since been republished by Shambhala Publications as Jizo Bodhisattva: Guardian of Children, Travelers, and Other Voyagers.

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Established in 2009 as a grassroots initiative, Sweeping Zen is a digital archive of information on Zen Buddhism. Featuring in-depth interviews, an extensive database of biographies, news, articles, podcasts, teacher blogs, events, directories and more, this site is dedicated to offering the public a range of views in the sphere of Zen Buddhist thought. We are also endeavoring to continue creating lineage charts for all Western Zen lines, doing our own small part in advancing historical documentation on this fabulous import of an ancient tradition. Come on in with a tea or coffee. You're always bound to find something new.

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